Mullins sending strong team to Auteuil this weekend Willie Mullins cannot the resist the lure of valuable French prizes on offer at Auteuil this weekend and will send a strong team of nine runners to compete at the Grand Steeple-Chase De Paris meeting, as he considers sending Galopin Des Champs to the meeting in the future. With significant prizes still to be won across the Channel, the champion trainer is looking to add to his outstanding record at major spring festivals this year. In addition to familiar names including, Kilcruit, Haut En Couleurs, Klassical Dream and Asterion Forlonge, Franco De Port and Carefully Selected will contest the 'Grand Steep' itself. Mullins' nephew Emmet Mullins, has entered 2022 Grand National hero, Noble Yeats. Despite this, the Carlow trainer is eager to win the trophy at some point in his career. “There’s a great challenge from Ireland this year with Noble Yeats, he’s my nephew’s horse and he’s going to put in a big show there,” he said. “It’s something I want to win, I’ve been trying to look for a horse that’s good enough to win it. “I should have probably targeted it before now because I have so many French horses, I’m just going through my runners here and seven out of the nine horses are French. “I should have done this before, however, we’ve always concentrated on Cheltenham and Punchestown, so to get one cherry ripe over this trip at the end of the season is a bit tougher.” Auteuil was at one point the intended target for Galopin Des Champs, a fantastic winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup who then re-routed to the Punchestown Gold Cup where he was second. Though his campaign eventually headed in a different direction, Mullins still has the meeting in mind for the French-bred chaser. He said: “I’d love to bring Galopin Des Champs over and indeed he was probably en-route there, but after winning the Gold Cup at Cheltenham, we decided he’d probably better come back to Punchestown and after that I thought I should give him a break. “He’s done everything right for us this season, possibly some other year we might bring him over. He’s a horse I’d love to see over there.”
